RECENT NEWS ARTICLES

This page contains a selection of recent news articles and commentary about male victims of violence and abuse plus related issues. These articles are presented as a community service, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the One in Three Campaign.

Please send any relevant news articles to us by clicking here and we will post them on this page.

Megan said her brother stayed in the marriage for eight years because he was afraid of “losing his children” and he “loved” his wife despite what she did.

But within days of being granted a temporary protection order (a type of domestic violence order or DVO) against his wife, Megan’s brother died of a heart attack. He was in his 40s.

Megan said her brother received 110 abusive text messages from his wife in breach of the DVO the day before he died, wishing him dead, threatening to burn the house down and hurt him and the children.

She said her brother died trying to save himself and his children from a harmful environment. “He sought help through the police and support services,” she said.

“My family also sought help (for him). No one cared.”

Megan said men faced many barriers when they tried to disclose domestic violence.

“No one believes them and hardly anyone will speak up for them,” she said.

“Because of these barriers, men are much less likely to report being a victim of domestic and family violence.”

Waterford MP and Minister for Women Shannon Fentiman said the State Government was committed to supporting victims of domestic violence, regardless of their gender.

“(Former Governor General) Quentin Bryce said, in the Not Now, Not Ever report, the majority of domestic violence offences are committed by men against women and that it is a gendered crime,” she said.

“The latest police figures show that 86 per cent of offenders who breach a DVO are male.

“That is not to detract from the fact that domestic violence does happen to men, and family violence can have a devastating effect on young boys as well.”

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Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has admitted she "changed her language" around domestic violence after hearing of the men it impacted.

Ms Palaszczuk, who has led a government-wide response to domestic violence issues after receiving the 'Not Now, Not Ever' report commissioned by the previous administration, said violence against men did need to be recognised while speaking with a male domestic violence survivor at the Bundaberg community cabinet event.

"I do understand that there are a number of men have gone through or are going through [domestic violence]," she said.

"I actually did change my language when it did become public because it was brought to my attention that there was some serious issues surrounding some men in our community needing help as well

"I do think that is something we do need to address a bit more."

Ms Palaszczuk said she would be asking for an inclusive campaign when she next speaks with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

"It has to be about stopping violence," she said.

"I was very clear when I have been down at COAG, previously when I was with Tony Abbott and I'll be making it very clear to Malcolm Turnbull as well, that any advertising needs to be about respectful relationships, that we need to make sure that that is actually taught not just in the home, but in the schools and that it is the way we treat men and women and it is about calling people out for the wrong thing."

One in six women will experience or have experienced violence against them by a current or former partner, while more than 60 women have been killed in family violence related incidents this year.

Ms Palaszczuk said the campaign to address domestic violence was one example of the state and federal governments working together and said she believed there would also be agreement on medical cannabis.

"This is another issue that you are gradually seeing bipartisan support," she said.

"So not only do we have bipartisan support on stopping domestic violence, so we now have bipartisan support on looking at medical cannabis for the trial in the first stage and looking t what is the regulatory framework that is needed at the federal level.

"And, we do acknowledge the benefits that would bring to a lot of families."

Queensland announced it would be taking part in the trials earlier this year.

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Please take the time to contact Ms Palaszczuk to congratulate her on acknowledging male victims of family violence.

“Your victim blaming has done almost as much harm to victims of Domestic Violence as the abusers,” read one email.

Yes, the faux-rage meter was at full tilt.

But I value these intemperate expressions, because they provide evidence of a concerted attempt to cover up the truth.

Domestic violence is the last frontier of feminism. You might think women had already achieved equality in the traditional markers of status in our society, most obviously in higher education, where 60 per cent of university graduates last year were female.

But for feminism to remain relevant, it needs to extend victim status even to the most affluent, pampered women of the chattering classes.

Thus the feminist dogma about domestic violence is that all women are equally at risk and all men potential perpetrators.

In the words of Natasha Stott Despoja, Australia’s Ambassador for Women and Girls, and the Chair of domestic violence lobbying organisation Our Watch: “Violence against women does not discriminate, regardless of ethnicity, social status and geography.”

Only, actually, it does.

This is what I pointed out in the column that has enraged the sisterhood, that domestic violence is concentrated in communities where the underclass lives, where welfare dependency has emasculated men, where drug and alcohol abuse is rife, and intergenerational social disadvantage is entrenched.

I cited the latest data from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics, showing the rate of domestic violence in Bourke, with its large indigenous population 60 times higher than in affluent north shore Sydney suburbs. The housing estate welfare traps concentrated in Campbelltown and Penrith are similar hotspots.

The evidence is everywhere if you care to look, that poverty, intergenerational dysfunction, mental illness and substance abuse are preconditions for a domestic violence hotspot, with chronic underreporting in indigenous communities hiding the level of distress.

Take the NSW Coroner’s Court’s annual reports of the NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team which invariably involve welfare dependent couples in and out of jail, with “cumulative social issues in both cases”.

The cases are marked by “serious social disadvantage including in many cases poverty, substance abuse issues, violent coping mechanisms, intergenerational violence”.

Or take the 2011 BOSCAR report Personal stress, financial stress and violence against women which shows “risk of violence increases progressively with the level of financial stress (and) personal stress”.

For pointing out these inconvenient truths, I was accused of “blaming victims”.

Fake quotes attributed to me, such as: “Rich men don’t hit women.”

The classic modus operandi of feminist outrage sites such as MamaMia is to make up a line, pretend I said it and then attack me for (not) saying it.

This is the intolerance of the femi-fascist. They ignore BOSCAR statistics but trumpet every half-baked internet survey which makes a ludicrous claims such as that a quarter of young Australian men don’t think there’s anything wrong with beating women.

When the Our Watch group, which receives $8 million of federal funding each year to “change attitudes”, wrote a rebuttal to my column this week, it airily claimed that “the latest international evidence shows that factors such as low socio-economic status or harmful use of alcohol do not have a constant or predictable impact on levels of violence against women”.

Yet, when challenged to provide this evidence, Our Watch cited a UN report on domestic violence in other Asia-Pacific countries such as Indonesia, PNG and Bangladesh. When further challenged to provide research from comparable countries to Australia, Our Watch cited a European study which contains Australian criticism of “the lack of attention to social class and to working class community norms and pressures” in domestic violence cases; it also cited a study which found that lower socioeconomic status was more frequent among men enrolled in “batterers’ programs”.

Campaigns such as Destroy the Joint’s Counting Women project insist on making domestic violence a gender issue. It claims 66 women are victims this year, with the implication these are all “intimate partner” homicides, perpetrated by males.

In fact, only about half of the homicides cited could be classified as having a male partner or ex-partner identified as the killer.

Some of the 66 victims were killed by women, by sisters, daughters, a female neighbour or, in one case, a female ex-lover of the victim’s husband, as well as by brothers, fathers, and sons.

Domestic violence is a serious enough without exaggerating.

The activists cherrypick facts to support their dogma, rather than using statistics to better target scarce resources to help the most vulnerable victims, and to address the root causes of domestic violence.

To break the intergenerational cycle of violence, I wrote that we need to “end the welfare incentive for unsuitable women to keep having children to a string of feckless men”. This was twisted to claim that I had called victims of domestic violence “unsuitable women”.

The dishonesty is clear. The aim is to avoid the obvious, that boys brought up in an environment of chaos, dysfunction and violence, who are neglected and abused, are more likely to become abusive, violent men with poor impulse control.

But these are not facts the man-bashing femi-fascists who control the domestic violence industry want to hear.

In order to carry out our aim of raising public awareness of the existence and needs of male victims of family violence, the One in Three Campaign encourages all media, whether mainstream media, websites, blogs or social media, to widely share our material with attribution. However, use of our material by any third party is not a sign of endorsement or affiliation between that party and One in Three. In order to carry out our aim of working with governments to provide better assistance to those affected by family violence, the One in Three Campaign works actively with all sides of the political spectrum but is unaffiliated with any political party or position.